Behaviour

Straight-tusked elephant consumed large areas of interglacial woodland vegetation and were major tree-eaters.

Straight-tusked elephants were great environmental modifiers.The elephants would modify and open up woodland environments so that animals better adapted to open conditions could move in. A good example of this process is represented by the finds at Aveley, where the straight-tusked elephants quickly give way to the open country steppe mammoths (Mammuthus trogontherii) within a single warm episode (OIS 7).

This important element of the Middle and Late Pleistocene temperate interglacial mammal assemblages functioned as a great environmental modifier, consuming large areas of interglacial woodland vegetation in Europe and Asia whenever such environments spread following climatic warming and glacial retreat.